Ink and Steel (50 page)

“I'll see you at dinner,” Will said. “And then this afternoon, more centaurs.”

Kit opened the door, turned back, and smiled. “And satyrs?”

“Christ,” Will grumbled, following. “A little pity on an old man.”

Kit laughed as he left, bracing himself for the knowing smiles that certainly would greet his and Will's simultaneous reappearance after eighteen hours of silence and a locked door. Things were different in Faerie, aye; for one thing, the gossip galloped three times faster.

He picked his way down the stairs, one hand on the railing, as Will went up, and tried not to frown.
Trouble thyself not with that thou canst not command. Thou Lovest, and art Loved. 'Twill serve.

Breakfast had no more formality in the Mebd's palace than it had at Cambridge or in a shoemaker's house in Canterbury, but Kit had paid in two missed meals for the pleasure of an uninterrupted afternoon and evening, and he made haste to the hall in the hope that there would be bread and butter and small beer left. The tables had not been cleared for dinner, but there wasn't much left to choose between. He piled curds and jam on thick slices of wheat bread with gloriously messy abandon, balancing two in his left hand and the third atop his tankard until he found a place at a crumb-scattered trestle and fell to with a passion.

He was halfway through the second slice, leaning forward over the board to save his doublet the spatters, when a shadow fell across the table. He looked up, chewing, into Morgan's eyes and swallowed hastily. “Your Highness.”

Her smile had a flinty glitter as she hiked up her skirt and stepped over the bench opposite. “Sir Christofer. I see you're in good appetite.”

“I missed my supper. Will was looking for you just now.”

“I shall seek him. I trust you had a productive evening—”

“Most.” Oh, that smile. Deadly. She helped herself to his tankard, sipped, and frowned over the beer before pushing it back at him. Kit never dropped his gaze as he drank.

“One
can
send down to the kitchens for a tray, if one is indisposed.”

“If one wishes the distraction. Poetry waits for no man.”

Now she gave him a better smile. “And was it poetry?”

“Of the sheerest sort.”

“I expect you shan't be calling upon me this morning, in that case. Now that thou hast had thine use of me—”

The wrong tack; Kit tore bread with his teeth and swallowed more beer, giddiness in his newfound power. “Consider all debts paid for the use you had of me.”

“Touché. You won't take him from me, you know.” A possessiveness he wondered if she'd ever shown over him flickered across her face.

The jealousy he'd thought well-sated flared, and he chased it down with beer.
Must she own everything she touches?

The question was the answer. “Madam, he is a married man, with a home and children. I won't see him bound to you.”

“No? How will you stop me? If I offered him surcease from pain and a place in Faerie at my side? At your side too, Kit. Help me. He'd half like to stay here. He wouldn't deny us both.”

“He'd have to become like me. A changeling.”

“An Elf-knight, Sir Kit. Where's your blade, I wonder?”

“In my room. An
Elf-knight?
”

“And yet you wear your rapier wit.” She shook her head. “What else did you think you were become? Help me, Kit. Help me save your true love's life—”

Oh. Oh.
He thought of Will's hand shaking. Knew Morgan had been waiting, lying in wait, and this was the opportunity he'd given her. Closed his eye for an instant, and covered his mouth with a hand that smelled of sugar and blackberries. “And damn his soul?”

He watched her face, the thin line between her crow-black brows, the way her eyes went green in passion and the mounting morning light, and realized he'd misjudged and misunderstood her again. “Morgan. ” She startled at her name, and at the tenderness in it, which startled him as well. “Wouldst take his family from him, my Queen? Bind him as thou hast bound Marley, and Murchaud, and Lancelot, and Arthur? Should the list of names continue? Accolon, Guiomar, Mordred, Bertilak. How many great men hast thou destroyed?”

“How many have I made greater than they were? How many have I healed and defended? I am not merely that evil that thou wouldst name me, Christofer.”

“Morgan,” he said, understanding. He took her immaculate hand and cupped it in his own. “I know what thou art.”

She blinked. The tone in his voice held her; the revelation un-scrolled. “Thou art that which nourishes and destroys: the deadly mother, the lover who is death. Because that is what we have made thee, with our tales of thy wit and sorcery. Thou art too much for mortal men to bear.”

She sighed and sat back, but did not draw her hand away. “Wouldst see him die?”

Kit stuffed another piece of bread into his mouth with his left hand, refusing the bait. “Morgan. You're a
story
.”

“Aye, Master Marley. Poet, Queen's Man, cobbler's boy,” she said. “I'm a story. And now, so art thou.”

He sat back. He would have let her fingers slide out of his own, but she held him fast and looked him hard in the eye. “A story who'll live to see his mortal lover grow old and gray, totter and break. Canst bear it, Kit? Canst thou bear to see that light extinguished in a few short years?”

He shook his head. “No. I cannot bear it. But I rather imagine Will couldn't bear to bury his son, either. And Morgan, I
will
not see him owned. Mortal men are not meant to live in your world; we cannot bear
that
either.”

Heads were turning around the hall at the intensity of the whispered conversation, the white-knuckled grip across the table. Kit breathed deep. “Morgan. 'Tis true what I say.”

“Aye.” And it was a curse when she said it, and her eyes were blacker than he had ever seen them. “I was a
goddess,
Kit.”

“Madam,” he said with dignity. “You still are.”

Act III, scene xiii

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
As You Like It

Will's days seemed longer than the span of their hours, a languorous blur of lovemaking, companionship, and poetry that expanded to include time for every eventuality and sunsets too. The nights he spent with Kit or Morgan by turns, the days in rehearsal for
Chiron
—planned for the Hallowmas entertainment—or with his lovers.

He hadn't felt anything like it since the first flush of his affair with Annie.
It cannot Last.

No, only through the autumn, and when winter came to England Will must be homeward bound. Still the days were endless, the weeks longer than months, the perfection of his happiness such that he almost did not move himself to ask how time passed in the mortal world. “Worry not,” Kit assured him as they sat on rocks over the ocean, watching sunset stain the white manes of the waves, listening to their whickering. “Hallowmas will be Hallowmas, here as there, and then—”

“We'll have the bloody slaughter of the noblest of centaurs under our belts, and I will bid thee adieu.” Will pulled a stalk of salt grass and slipped the tender inwards from its overcoat to chew. He gave the dry brown husk to the air; the sea wind blew it back over his shoulder. “Kit, what will we do?”

Kit tugged his slowly growing cloak around his shoulders and bumped Will's shoulder with his own. “Ford it when we come to it,” he said. “We should—”

“Aye. We should.”

“It will only grow harder—”

The wind stirred Will's hair. The locks had outstripped the length they should have in the time he'd been in Faerie. “I can picture myself pining by my window for my Faerie lover, growing gray and sere. A legend will grow up—”

"Will!”
Kit grabbed his wrist, and jerked it. Will turned, startled; Kit's expression was wild. “Don't joke about such things. Never joke about such things; you're on the edge of legend here, and names have power, and things
Listen
.”

His plain fear brought an answering tingle to Will's spine, to his fingertips. “Morgan wants me to stay.” The chewed stem grew bitter. Will tossed it away.

“I want thee to stay,” Kit said, still staring. “And Morgan wishes me to plead with thee as well. But I will not permit it.”

Kit's pulse flickered in the hollow of his throat. Will wrenched his eyes away. “Art my sovereign, Marley?” Soft as the ocean's breath playing over them both.

“Aye.” The fingers on Will's wrist tightened. “Aye, in this thing, I am. What would thy girls do, without thee?”

“What they do now, I expect. I've hardly been an exemplary father and husband.” Will kissed Kit's brow, by way of example.

Kit released him to pluck a smooth, moon-white stone from a crevice in their sand-worn perch. He tossed it thrice before it slipped between his fingers, rattling on the rocks below. “Blast. Thou hast the chance to be better at both, at least.” His gaze lifted to the darkening horizon.

Abruptly, Will understood. “Kit, forgive me—”

“There's nothing to forgive. I'd live to bury any wife or child I'd left behind; aye, and their grandchildren, too. If I'm fortunate enough that no one puts a knife in the other eye.”

The wind freshened. The day's warmth soaked the stone they sat upon; Will pressed his back against it. “After
Chiron
,” he said, dropping his arm around Kit's shoulders, “I suppose I shall go home.”

“I suppose that's best,” Kit said, and leaned closer as the light drained the sky, replaced by the slow unveiling of the stars. “Hast heard there's an astrologer in Denmark claims the stars are not settled in crystal vaults? That they float unsupported, and other stars— comets and
stella novae
—move through them?”

“I imagine the Pope hates him.”

“Not as much as he hates Copernicus, I imagine.”

"O, thou art fairer than the evening air / Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars—”

Kit laughed. “I should write you a poem. Something better than that.”

“Better than
Faustus
?”

“Christ wept, I hope I've improved.”

Will earthed himself under the warm edge of Kit's cloak, kissed him where his throat blended into his jaw, the sticky musk of the ocean rich on moist, salty skin. “Thou'rt all the poetry I need.”

“Sweet liar—”

“Sweeter when you know it cannot last.” Will's voice shivered with his whisper. Kit's answer was slow.

“Christ. Damn me to Hell. Yes, Will. 'Tis sweet.”

The old moon rose in the new moon's arms. The rocks grew cool around them. Kit's cloak concealed a multitude of sins.

And over the water, something listened and understood.

Act III, scene xiv

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
The Jew of Malta

Kit rubbed a corner of his eye in the dimming room and thought of candles. He stretched against the back of his chair, his spine crackling, and stood a moment before a hesitant knock rattled the door.

“Come!” He crossed to the fire to light a rush. The door swung open, revealing Murchaud leaning against its frame in a pose at once consciously arrogant and restlessly self-aware.

“Christofer.” The prince flipped a stray curl behind his ear, an un-characteristically tentative gesture. “Art thou . . . ?”

“Alone? Aye.” Kit touched his spill among the embers, then stood to apply the resultant flame to a lamp wick. “Come in.”

Murchaud stepped onto the jewel-patterned carpet, cautious as a stag. Kit blew out the rushlight, adjusted the lamp, and fitted its chimney, carrying it to his table as a scent of char filled the room. It spilled golden light across his poems and paper, and Kit slid them aside until he found pipe and tobacco pouch among the clutter.

“Filthy habit,” the Elf-knight said, latching the door. “I'd thought thee quit of it.”

Kit turned to face Murchaud, tamping the pipe with his thumb. “I was.” He didn't know how to explain that he woke from his dreams of late with the smell of tobacco and whiskey clinging to his skin, full of strange cravings nothing would assuage. He dipped a second spill down the chimney of the lamp and lit his pipe from it. Settling down on his stool again, he let the first breath of smoke drip down his chin.

Murchaud leaned against the locked door and crossed his arms. “I came to wish thee well tomorrow.”

“The
Chiron
? Thank you. Will needs your luck more than I do; my part is finished. He'll be on the stage.”

"
Will
”—Murchaud grimaced—“is with my mother tonight.”

“In rehearsal first.”

“I know. And so I came to thee. I expect thou planst to be with him after the play.”

“So I had anticipated,” Kit answered slowly, cupping the warm bowl of his pipe in his hand. The embers had gone out from inattention: he reached for a rush. “He returns to London on All Saints' Day.”

Murchaud straightened away from the door. “And will your cruelty to me end when he is gone, my love?”